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134 Dick departed with his fingers down Slicker's collar; but outside the yard where the school-children played at the swings, noisy with the fret of spring that would soon call them to the woods again, Slicker freed himself.

"I have been wanting to catch you alone for a week, Dick," he said. "Of course you know what people are saying about Tempest and Grange's Andree?"

Dick shrugged his shoulders. The idle talk had galled him extremely; but he had never considered it his mission to interfere in the affairs of other men.

"Your perspicacity does you credit," he said dryly.

Slicker flushed. His eyes had not lost the look of youth's dreams; but he was growing more conscious of his manhood every day.

"You must stop it," he cried. "I hate to have anything said against Tempest."

"Do you? Well, so do I, Slicker. But don't you understand that no silly talk can touch him? He fathers and mothers the whole of Grey Wolf, and if Andree gets more than her share—well, she is uncommonly pretty, you know. As men of the world, Slicker, we must allow Tempest a few human failings. His virtues insist that they shall be very few, poor devil."

"But he loves her."

"That remark," said Dick, lighting his pipe, "is unworthy of your intellect."

"But it's true! I saw him kissing her hands only yesterday."

"You what?"

Slicker repeated his assertion, and Dick dropped the match and put his foot on it. He would have put it on Andree with as little compunction just then. Tempest and Jennifer were the only beautiful things in his world, and the mere suggestion of this sickened him. He looked at the boy narrowly.

"Of course he was only taking out a sliver," he said. "But even so it is hardly worth talking about, is it? And the kind of scandal Grey Wolf amuses itself with is hardly worth dabbling in, either."

He went on, leaving Slicker abashed and unconvinced, and totally unaware of the shock which he had given the